Friday is the last day this week the forecast gives the water past twenty miles seas of around 2 feet, and the Atlantic red snapper season ends the Thursday after, Oct. 22. That date belongs to anglers inside FWC’s Exempted Fishing Permit. Outside it, federal water closed on Oct. 11. The limit has not changed since September: one fish per person, no minimum size, inside a ten-fish snapper and grouper aggregate. Nothing is in force tonight. The weekend behind Friday is the problem.
A cold front moves southeast across the area Friday night and strong high pressure builds behind it. The Jacksonville forecast office’s synopsis puts what follows as “a surge of north winds” down the coastal waters, with “elevated winds from late Friday night through much of next week, with potential for Gale force winds late Saturday into Monday.”
Much of next week is the rest of the season.
That matters more than it would in August, because the bottom this coast catches red snapper on lies past the twenty-mile line, and the only thing the paper has for that water is a zone forecast. There is no buoy on the outer shelf off St. Johns County. Past 41117 at about twelve miles, every sea figure below is a forecast across a whole marine zone and not a reading anybody took.
The fourteen days belong to the permit, not the calendar
FWC puts this near the top of its own season page, ahead of the rules, which is a fair signal of how often it comes up. The fourteen-day season is an Exempted Fishing Permit season. The federal season was three days long and it ended Oct. 11.
“FWC recognizes there may be confusion between Florida’s 14-day EFP season (October 9-22) and the 3-day federal season (October 9-11),” the page says. “Anglers may participate in either the 14-day EFP season or the 3-day federal season, but not both.”
On a Friday run that works out as follows. An angler inside the permit, following its requirements and carrying a copy of it along with the trip declaration from FWC’s reporting app, may keep a red snapper in Atlantic state and federal water through Oct. 22. An angler who fished the federal weekend without following the permit’s rules was limited to Oct. 9 through 11 in federal water, and that window shut five days ago.
Atlantic state water is shore to three miles. The ledges are past twenty.
The declaration is the part most likely to cost somebody a fish, and it has not changed since September. An angler 16 or older declares the trip in FWC’s reporting system before leaving the dock, and the agency prints the consequence in one line: “Anglers who do not declare a red snapper trip may not keep red snapper.” On a charter the operator declares. The customer does not.
The numbers on FWC’s general snapper page have been fixed since this paper last read them. On Sept. 23 the Atlantic block there carried the standing rule, a twenty-inch minimum and two fish a person, which were the wrong numbers for the season about to open; tonight it carries no minimum size limit and one per person inside the ten-fish snapper and grouper aggregate, which are the right ones. The status line sitting above those numbers has not kept up. At 8:33 Thursday evening, the seventh day of a season the same page says runs Oct. 9 to 22, it read “State: Closed (Opening October 9-22)” and “Federal: Closed (Opening October 9-22).”
What the weekend does, by the day
In the water from twenty to sixty nautical miles out, which is where the trip goes:
Friday is southwest winds 5 to 10 knots and seas around 2 feet, with a slight chance of showers in the afternoon. Friday night the wind goes south 10 to 15 and then west 20 to 25 after midnight, and the seas go 2 to 4 feet and occasionally 5.
Saturday is north winds 25 to 30 knots, seas 4 to 6 feet and occasionally 8, building to 6 to 9 and occasionally 11 in the afternoon. Saturday night is northeast 30 to 35, seas 9 to 12 feet and occasionally 15, building to 11 to 13 and occasionally 17 after midnight.
Sunday is northeast 30 to 35 knots and seas 12 to 13 feet, occasionally 17, building to 13 to 15 and occasionally 19. Monday eases to 11 to 14 feet, occasionally 18, and the wind does not.
Inside twenty miles the numbers are smaller and the language is worse. Saturday reads 3 to 5 feet building to 5 to 8 in the afternoon, and the forecast calls the Intracoastal very rough. Saturday night it reads 7 to 10 feet building to 9 to 13, and the Intracoastal goes to extremely rough. The forecast that covered the blow this season opened into used the words very rough six times and extremely rough not once, at seas of 7 to 10 feet and occasionally 14. It stays there through Monday.
Nothing is in force, and that is tonight only
As of the 8:30 update there was no advisory, watch or warning active for any of the eleven coastal and marine zones this paper watches, and none with a later onset. The season opened on Oct. 9 the same way, with every piece of paper covering the Georgia water and none of it reaching the St. Augustine zones, and the paperwork followed the weather down the coast afterward. A gale warning covers sustained winds of 34 to 47 knots. The Sunday forecast tops out at 35. A forecast carrying gale force winds as a possibility is not a gale watch. It is the sentence a gale watch gets written from.
The water tonight
The buoy twelve miles east northeast of the inlet, in about 76 feet, reported at 7:26 Thursday evening: seas 1.3 feet, peak period 8 seconds, water temperature 82.0 degrees. Those are NDBC’s own printed figures. The wave summary under them splits that into swell of 0.3 feet at 10.5 seconds out of the east and a wind wave of 1.3 feet at 7.7 seconds out of the east.
The two ends of the run agree with it. Fernandina read 0.5 meters at 7:56 and Ponce Inlet 0.6 meters at 7:25, which this paper makes 1.6 and 2.0 feet. On the pier at St. Augustine Beach the wind at 8 o’clock was out of the east at 3.6 meters per second, gusting 4.6.
This is the flattest water this coast has had since the season opened, and it has one day left to run.
At the beach the surf zone forecast carries a moderate rip current risk over surf of 1 to 2 feet tonight, and drops the risk to low for Friday. The Weather Service defines moderate as life-threatening rip currents being possible in the surf zone.
The number that moves the fish
The gauge at the Mayport Bar Pilots Dock read 81.1 degrees at 8:24 Thursday evening. On Oct. 5 it read 82. On the morning of Sept. 23, the day this paper first printed the season, it read 84.2.
That is three degrees out of the river in three weeks. The river cools first. The ocean has been slower: the buoy twelve miles out read 82.2 on Oct. 5 and 82.0 tonight. Mayport is river-mouth water thirty miles north in a different river, and it is the closest observed reading this coast has to the inlet, because nobody publishes an observed water temperature in the St. Augustine Inlet, in the Matanzas, or at St. Augustine Beach.
The surf forecast puts the water at 75 to 80 degrees, a band five degrees wide. The gauge thirty miles north gives 81.1. One of those numbers carries a tenth of a degree on water nobody is standing in.
What else changed Thursday
Flounder closed Thursday and stays closed through Nov. 30. Stone crab opened the same day. Hogfish has until Oct. 31. Those are FWC’s Atlantic entries, and in each case the year is this paper’s reading of a season the agency prints without one.
No operation that publishes a dated catch report has put one out for this water. The west wall of the Gulf Stream sits 58 nautical miles east of St. Augustine Beach, a position the forecast dates to Oct. 15 at 0000 UTC and credits to a model rather than to anything anybody measured.
Low water at St. Augustine Beach is 6:15 Friday morning and high water is 12:42 in the afternoon. The season has seven days left in it. The forecast gives it one.
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